2021 started out with such promise. COVID-19 vaccines were rolling out, and in January runoffs Georgia elected two Democrats to the U.S. Senate, offering hope for a return to normalcy after a year of quarantine and the cruelty and chaos of the Trump administration.
It wasn’t to be. Georgia may have sent Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock to Washington, but the one-vote majority didn’t hold together for long. And it turned out that a good 40% of Georgians would rather subject themselves to hospitalization and death than allow themselves to be injected with microchips or critical race theory or whatever Tucker Carlson told them was in the vaccines.
Still, by the time summer rolled around, COVID had nearly been eradicated in Athens, and all the events that had been canceled in the spring were rescheduled for the fall. Bars and restaurants reopened, and the music scene started to come back to life. Combined with a football season where the Dawgs were expected to be national title contenders, it promised to be a bumpin’ autumn.
Then the students came back to town, and they brought Delta with them. Driven by the new variant, a third wave of COVID swept over the city, forcing AthFest to be canceled yet again. But, of course, football continued on with a stadium full of fans as if nothing was happening, while the Board of Regents continued to insist that professors hold in-person classes while refusing to require masks or vaccinations.
Further angering faculty, the Board of Regents also weakened tenure, giving administrators more power to fire professors. The move drew a strong rebuke from the American Association of University Professors and, given the conservative furor over CRT and general political climate, had any number of UGA faculty members polishing their resumes.
Meanwhile, an uptick in gang violence turned into a crisis by late fall, with a shooting in Athens roughly every other day, according to Police Chief Cleveland Spruill. The chief feuded publicly with a task force appointed by Mayor Kelly Girtz to set up a civilian oversight committee, as well as Athens-Clarke County Commissioner Mariah Parker, who wanted to pull funding for a regional drug task force. The police oversight committee was eventually approved, as was the drug task force grant.
Newly elected District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez had some difficulties finding her footing, with high staff turnover and a couple of headline-grabbing snafus, but she followed through on her promises to stop prosecuting juveniles as adults, never seek the death penalty and to drop minor drug charges. This enraged voters in Oconee County, which shares a judicial circuit with Clarke, who wanted out of the Western Circuit. A state study found that Oconee County’s caseload was too small to justify its own Superior Court and prosecutor’s office. That didn’t stop state Rep. Houston Gaines (R-Athens) from continuing to look for another circuit for Oconee to join, and to pledge legislation that would rein in progressive DAs like Gonzalez.
Homelessness was on the rise, too, creating another crisis for the commission to deal with. When railroad company CSX announced it would clear out a local homeless camp, commissioners scrambled to find a place for its residents to go. With reduced capacity due to the pandemic, shelters were full, so they voted to set up a sanctioned campground on ACC property off of Barber Street. What was originally envisioned as a bare-bones place to set up a tent without fear of being run off the property morphed into a $2.5 million project serving meals, offering case management and with 24/7 security. The cost of an eviction prevention program that will pay landlords a portion of back rent in exchange for letting tenants stay in their homes also ballooned to $2.5 million. Luckily for local taxpayers, Uncle Sam picked up the tab. The county used a portion of the $60 million it received from the federal American Rescue Plan Act to fund the programs.
The tale of Linnentown gained national attention this year, with stories in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and on NBC News, among other news outlets, and even a segment during an ESPN football broadcast. In February, Girtz formally apologized for the city’s role in seizing Black-owned homes off Baxter Street in the late 1960s to make way for UGA dormitories. The commission approved a resolution promising recognition of the razed neighborhood and reparations in the form of affordable housing, economic development and public transportation. UGA President Jere Morehead, however, continues to deny that the university had any responsibility for Linnentown’s destruction and has offered former residents nothing beyond an exhibit in the Special Collections Library.
Another Black landmark, the West Broad School, remains in limbo after the Board of Education voted against Superintendent Xernona Thomas’ plan for an early learning center on the site. Thomas had recommended that two of three historic school buildings be torn down, with one historic building renovated and one new one built. In response, the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation put the long-vacant school on its 2021 “Places in Peril” list. In addition, Thomas announced that she intends to retire at the end of next year.
Despite the pandemic and an uncertain economy, Athens continued to grow. The 2020 Census found that Athens’ population had risen from 115,000 to 127,000 over the past decade. UGA’s enrollment is up, too, hitting 40,000 for the first time this fall. The growth came at a price: Local rents skyrocketed 17% in 2021, according to the website Apartment List, with the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment approaching $1,000 a month.
A spate of new construction could ease the housing crunch, though. The Mark is expanding into Potterytown between downtown and the river, Bethel Midtown Village off College Avenue is being redeveloped with twice as many below-market units, and huge apartment complexes with thousands of bedrooms combined are planned or under construction on Tallassee Road, Lexington Road and U.S. Highway 29 near the Kroger. A recently announced film and television studio off Athena Drive is likely to bring further growth to East and North Athens. More development is coming downtown, too, with a senior living facility and office space planned as part of the Classic Center’s new arena behind the Multimodal Center, and construction expected to start next year on a new courthouse nearby.
Next year is unlikely to bring a respite from the pandemic—not if Omicron has anything to say about it—nor from voter fatigue. Mayor Kelly Girtz and odd-numbered commissioners are up for re-election in May. That ballot will also feature a 1% sales tax for transportation and, for Republicans, Gov. Brian Kemp’s showdown with former Sen. David Perdue. The winner will face Stacey Abrams in what promises to be one of the most closely watched (and most expensive) races in the country, rivaled by Warnock’s re-election bid against whoever emerges from the Republican primary—most likely Herschel Walker. Yep, 2022 is going to step on our faces with a hobnail boot.
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